Fighting Free the Nipple Topless Order Will Cost Fort Collins $250K, Attorney Says

Update: Attorney David Lane says the decision by Fort Collins to appeal last month's temporary restraining order against the enforcement of the city's topless ordinance (see our previous coverage below) is a "titanic waste of money." He estimates that the fight will cost taxpayers in the community $250,000 for reasons that strike him as patently absurd.

"I can only assume that someone in Fort Collins was either attacked by or seriously offended by a wild nipple," he says. "Now that they're uncaged, you know how they can get."

According to Lane, he has heard no reports about "sightings of uncaged nipples since the injunction occurred," which only makes the expense of an appeal even more jaw-dropping. "If they run through all their appeals, it'll cost about a quarter of a million bucks" — around $150,000 to pay the fees for his firm, as well as around $100,000 for outside counsel retained by FoCo.

Such an outlay is definitely a gamble, because Lane doesn't see a path to victory for the city. He considers U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson's rationale for instituting the restraining order in February to be "the correct legal interpretation," and he has "no reason to believe" that a three-judge panel at the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, the recent home base of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, will feel differently. In his view, "there are a lot of very smart judges on the 10th Circuit who will agree with Judge Jackson."

Read more: http://www.westword.com/news/free-the-nipple-topless-order-being-fought-by-fort-collins-8903249